sleep - UDM Command
Syntax
sleep seconds | hh:mm
Description
The sleep command is used to pause execution of the script.
Two forms are available:
sleep seconds | Sleep for the specified number of seconds. |
sleep hh:mm | Sleep until an explicit time in the 24-hour clock. |
If an explicit time (hh:mm) is specified that already has occurred on the current day, the script will be paused until that time on the following day.
Parameters
Parameter | Description |
|---|---|
seconds | Number of seconds to sleep. |
hh:mm | Explicit time to sleep until (based on a 24-hour clock). If the specified time is in the past (based on the current local time in the 24-hour cycle when the sleep command is executed), the script will pause until the specified time on the following day. |
Examples
To pause execution for 10 seconds:
sleep 10
To pause execution until 10:30 p.m.:
sleep 22:30
If the explicit time form of the sleep command (sleep hh:mm) is used in a loop (for example, forfiles), iterations following the first sleep command are likely to be in the past (perhaps by 1 second), causing some iterations to sleep until the next day.
For example, consider the following loop:
forfiles src=*.txt sortby=createdate
# Do some stuff
...
sleep 5:00
end
If the some stuff portion of each iteration of the loop took at least 1 second, the script would sleep for approximately 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds, with each iteration following the first.